Twelve months wedded, Lady Delaval yet leads a charmed life. Her cup of bliss overflows, and under its influence her lovely face is tenfold lovelier, with the sunshine of her soul illuminating it.

She has made her curtsey to the Queen on her marriage, and her train, her coiffure, and her beauty have been the talk of town. She looks so good and pure too, with no fast proclivities, and to the satiated eyes of town men these things have vast attraction.

Lord Delaval has shunned all his old haunts, turned the cold shoulder to his numerous loves, avoided even looking at the professional and other beauties, and evinced an utter devotion to one woman—his wife—a fact which has amazed Society, amongst whom his fickleness has been a by-word hitherto.

Prophecies as to the duration of such strange and praiseworthy conduct are rife.

Will he stick to it?

The “No’s” preponderate considerably over the “Yes’s,” but time will reveal which of the gossips are the best judges of human nature.

When the season is over, they come down to Delaval Court—a magnificent place in Hampshire—and here among the beautiful sylvan shades, Zai discovers that she has really fallen over head and ears in love with her handsome husband, but with a graver, even tenderer, sentiment than mere being “in love.” She is grown so fragile that she looks as if a breath of wind would blow her away, but her heart beats stronger than ever with two feelings—love for the man she has married, and love for the child which is to perfect her life; and Lord Delaval, about whom is a deal of indolent sybaritical self-indulgence, has his “mystic” summer too.

He really finds it quite delicious to talk of the future as he lies stretched at full length on the cool green velvety sward at his wife’s feet, in the twilight and the starlight, with the subtle fragrance of a myriad flowers pervading their senses, and the Channel sweeping before them like a great phantom sea.

Somehow the stars seem to shine with a holier, tenderer radiance; the roses sigh out greater sweetness; the waters murmur more gladly to him than they have ever done before in his life.

True, that in these charmed moments he talks principally of town topics; and she scarcely comprehends the gist of the gossip. Belgravian born and bred as she is, she has never in fact really comprehended the world of London well, but she likes to hear her husband tell about it, simply because it is the world in which he has lived so much.

But somehow, to Zai, the theatres, the balls, Hurlingham, the fashionable resorts, the feverish dissipation among which she passed nineteen years seem distant and even myths now. She cares nothing for town, save the Park, and even that cannot vie, in her eyes, with the delightful green shades and sunlit bits that Delaval Court owns.

She does not feel the least interested in the new professional beauties or the American stars that crop up, to make themselves nine days’ wonders at the risk of a life-long reputation. Zai has, in fact, a foolish horror of women being held up to public view and subjected to public admiration and criticism. Her notions are a little obsolete, perhaps, for neither Lord nor Lady Beranger are good, simple folk, and have plenty of the “go-ahead” sentiments of their fellow aristocrats, and their daughters have certainly not been brought up as quietly and carefully as they might have been.

But, after all, Zai’s goodness and purity to a certain extent is a disadvantage to her.

Men of the Lord Delaval type are not likely to be long attracted by rustic wax-work when passionate, demonstrative human nature comes in their way to appeal to their feelings or senses, and even in these palmy days, Lord Delaval, when he finds his wife uninterested in the talk that his lips are mostly accustomed to utter, feels rather injured and inclined to be silent or sullen. But he is quite enough enamoured of her still, not to seek for other audiences, at any rate, just yet. So the summer flies quickly by, and autumn is waning, and Zai, as she opens her sweet grey eyes on a dull November morning, remembers that to-day is the anniversary of her marriage, and thanks God for the happiness He has granted her. But the autumnal days are dark and dreary, and the presence of outsiders, which would have seemed a terrible nuisance to Lord Delaval a few weeks ago, would now be a blessing. He feels as if he would gladly welcome anybody, whose advent would put a little spice, a little zest into his daily routine. It is easier for an Ethiopian to change his skin and a leopard his spots than for a worldling to alter his nature.

Lord Delaval does not acknowledge to himself even, with that utter self-delusion that comes so easily to most men—that there was something in poor Gabrielle’s feverish passion that appealed to him, gratified him, soothed him. He does not guess himself how deliciously sweet to his heart are the voice of flattery and the yield of worship. There are men and men.

To some, the self-abnegatory passion of women is no doubt distasteful, even repellant. To others—to those of Lord Delaval’s temperament especially—it is a poisonous incense—intoxicating, subtle, pleasant, and nearly always irresistible.

Meanwhile, Zai has no wish ungratified, no desire unsatisfied. To her the world contains but one man, and this is—her husband. Now and then she remembers the existence of Carlton Conway, but only with wonder filling her that she ever could have exalted him into a creature to adore, when he is so different—personally, mentally, in every way—to Delaval. She is flung, as it were, on her husband entirely for all the pleasure, enjoyment, and amusement of life. Gabrielle is drowned; Baby is dead; her father and mother, left to themselves, live in the London world and for the London world. There is no one, then, of her people, save Trixy, from whom she can hear of the old life, the old haunts, the old faces, and Trixy, with her grand house in Park Lane, her dresses, her jewels, her millions, is strangely silent. “She has no time, amid the pomps and vanities, to think of me, I suppose,” Zai says, after a couple of months have elapsed since Trixy’s last hurried scrawl. “Did you hear of her, Delaval, yesterday in town?”

“Yes!” he answers rather gravely. Lax as he is in morals himself, he objects utterly to his wife’s ears being sullied with scandal. After all, though Zai’s innocence rather palls on him, he would not have it otherwise for all the world. But he has heard so much of Trixy from Percy Rayne that he feels it his bounden duty to do his best to keep the mire off the family he has married into.

“You did not tell me you had heard about her,” Zai says, rather reproachfully, “perhaps you even saw her!”

“No, I didn’t, my darling; but I am going to see her! and that to-morrow. Your sister is a giddy, frivolous little woman, and poor old Stubbs hasn’t much influence over her, I am afraid.”

“Why, what has Trixy been doing, Delaval?” Zai asks hastily, lifting up a pair of anxious grey eyes, that are so pretty that he draws their owner down on his knee and kisses her.

“Never mind what she has been doing, my own! I’m not going to tell you all the naughty things women do, or you will be following their bad example!”

“Delaval!”

Zai flings her arm round her husband’s neck, and kisses him in return. Like CÆsar’s wife, she renders unto CÆsar all that is his due—with interest.

“Well?”

“You don’t really believe I would ever do anything wrong, do you?” she whispers.

“I believe you are an angel!” he says truthfully, “and that is why I won’t let anything of the earth—earthy, come near you!”

But Zai, angel though she may be, has some of Eve’s curiosity in her.

“I know Trixy did not like Mr. Stubbs when she married him. But she always said she did not want love or affection so long as she had a fine house and lots of diamonds,” she says, after a moment, and he reads in her face a longing to hear more.

“Fishing!” he laughs. “No use, little one, to fish in shallow water, you know! I’m not going to tell you anything about Trixy’s shortcomings now, and I hope I shall not have anything to tell you later. Never mind about Trixy, darling. Think about your husband. Will you miss him? I shall be away three or four days, I am afraid, for I have a lot of business to do. I have been living in Dreamland here so long that I have neglected everything—but you!”

“Going to London for three or four days, Delaval?” she asks, with positive tears in her eyes. “Oh! I am so sorry.”

“Nonsense, Zai. We can’t always be tied together, or we may get tired of one another, you know!” he replies, with a careless smile. The little change to Town is quite an event to him, and he would not give it up for the world.

“Tired of one another?” she says, with a little quiver of her lip. “You may be tired of me, but I shall never be tired of you—never, so long as I live!”

And he believes her. For loads of women have never tired of him, although he has treated them cruelly, and flung them aside, like old gloves or withered flowers.

“My little darling!” he murmurs, quite softly, pleased at her open adoration of his irresistible self, “I shall never be tired of you, as far as I can see. But you must not tax me too much. Men love variety, you know! This Darby and Joan sort of life is very delightful, my pet, but ne quid nimis—translated in English, ‘Too much of a good thing is as bad as nothing!’ We must not let our happiness pall on us, Zai!”

She turns away her head, and answers not a word. What can she say? If he could see her face, it might bring him to a knowledge of the true and enduring love he has inspired in the soft, loving, girlish heart. But he doesn’t trouble to see it. Perhaps he thinks it is best to ignore reproach or pathos, rather than let them prove hindrances to his pleasure and amusement.

And Zai neither asks him to curtail his visit to London, nor to speak differently to her. For his indifferent words have cut her to the heart. And for the first time since her marriage, directly his back is turned, she sheds a perfect torrent of tears, and during his absence wanders like a little ghost about the big house, with white cheeks, and great pitiful eyes, and a load on her spirits that she cannot shake off.

Meanwhile, Lord Delaval, driving from Waterloo to his club, espies, standing at a shop, a brougham he knows; and stopping his hansom, walks up to it just as its occupant is getting in.

She is a lovely, golden-haired woman, but he scarcely recognises her. For all the old delicious pink colour has left her cheeks, and she looks wan and haggard, and years older than she did two months ago.

“How do you do, Trixy?” he says, startling her evidently, for she drops a tiny parcel on the pavement. “I wanted to see you. In fact, I came up to Town on purpose.”

“On purpose to see me, Delaval! What for?” she asks nervously. “I can’t stay now to talk, anyhow. Piccadilly isn’t exactly the place for a confab, you know. Especially as everyone doesn’t know you’re my handsome brother-in-law!”

“And you are so very particular as to what people think—eh, Trixy?” he asks, drily.

“Of course, I wish to adhere to the convenances!” she answers, rather sullenly.

“Well, we won’t talk now. When may I call and see you?”

She hesitates, evidently. It may be that her time is not her own. Then suddenly she changes her mind.

“Come with me now, Delaval! I am sure you were only going for a prowl down Regent Street, and I am rather curious to hear what you want to talk about—come in.”

He puts a foot on the step, then pauses.

“But how about the convenances? Everyone doesn’t know that I am not one of your lovers!”

“Bother the convenances,” she cries, impatiently, “and everyone knows I have no lovers.”

He enters the brougham, and a few in the crowd, who know the lovely golden-haired woman by sight as one of the London belles, begin to chatter about her. Different versions and interpretations of the matter fly from lip to lip, the favourite rendition being a modified version of “Auld Robin Gray.”

“She married old Peter Stubbs, the millionaire, against her will, you know,” Bevan, a man in the Coldstreams, tells a pretty coquettish little woman who stands beside him on the steps of the Burlington Arcade. “She was over head and ears in love with Conway, the actor.”

“I know Carlton Conway,” little Mrs. De Clifford answers. “I met him last night at Flora Fitzallan’s supper. He was quite the host there. Flora has loved him slavishly for years, and though he spends all her money, he tyrannises over her awfully. I suppose that wonderfully handsome fellow is another lover of Mrs. Stubbs’,” she adds, with a lingering look at Delaval’s undeniable beauty.

“It happens to be her brother-in-law, Lord Delaval, this time,” the man replies, in the tone that flings away a woman’s reputation in the twinkling of an eye.

“And is Lady Delaval alive?” Mrs. De Clifford asks carelessly, but with a mind to find out if Lord Delaval’s agreeability equals his good looks.

Bevan, who has rather a weakness for his companion, awakens at once to a suspicious condition.

“Very much alive, I hope! Lady Delaval is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and her husband adores her,” he says, with malice prepense.

Meanwhile the brougham, “dark green, very dark green, and by Peters,” as Trixy had ordained, has disgorged its occupants at a house which is as exquisite within as it is big and stately without, and even Lord Delaval, who is habituated to luxury, is struck forcibly by the judicious manner in which the ethereal inspiration of poets and painters, Trixy Stubbs, has so ably contrived to feather her nest.

“I am inclined to believe, after all, Trixy, that you made a very wise choice,” he remarks, a little sardonically, as he follows her into a dim, flower-scented, rose-hung, mirror-embellished room, which the Honourable Mrs. Stubbs calls her boudoir, and is told to sit down in a chair that might tempt an anchorite into a fondness for luxury and repose. “Love sometimes flies out of the window, my dear Trixy; but statues, and mirrors, and French furniture are not disturbed by any such freaks of passion. One’s heart might be in a fair way to break, but such a delicious chair as this would be a comfort all the same.”

“I am not so sure of that,” says Trixy, in her “Mary Anderson” voice, full of pathos and tragedy, as she flings her dainty bonnet of pale blue velvet, with its high silver aigrette, on the marquetrie floor, and sinks into a corresponding chair, with a wealth of bright amber hair crowning her like the halo of a saint.

“Sometimes I should not care if it did all fly through the window,” she goes on, moodily. “Sometimes, Delaval, I cannot help thinking I have paid a little too dear for—for everything.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, bluntly. “Did you not choose to marry Stubbs? That being the case, what right have you to complain because your bargain may not be exactly to your taste? If you had not married of your own free will, of course no one could have forced you into it.”

“My own free will!” repeats Trixy, scornfully, curving down the corners of her red lips. “I wonder when a man—a man like you—ever comprehends that a woman’s free will, from her very cradle to her grave, means just nothing. No right to complain, haven’t I? Well, I am not complaining. My husband is kind and good to me, better and kinder by far than I deserve; but none the less I suffer more than you would believe I do, if I were fool enough to tell you everything.”

Tears rise up in her lovely blue eyes—hot, angry, scorching tears, but she chokes them back.

Life is beginning to teach even this little spoiled butterfly some self-control, and that wisdom which is learned only through sad experience. Lord Delaval, susceptible always, is touched even by the beauty and evident unhappiness of his sister-in-law. He leans forward, takes gently the white hand that has dashed away the rebellious tear drops.

“Don’t be vexed, Trixy, if I spoke a little roughly just now,” he says, in his pleasantest accents. “You used to like me years ago when you were a child, and although you have out-grown the fondness, I am sure you know that I like you awfully, if it is only for Zai’s sake.”

“Delaval, I want you to answer me a question—on your honour, you know. Does Zai love you?”

“Love me? My dear Trixy, your question makes me answer rather conceitedly, perhaps; but on my honour I don’t believe any woman loves her husband better than my wife loves me.”

“Thank God for that!” she exclaims passionately.

He stares at her in surprise. Trixy is not of a devout nature, and it seems to him a little strange also that she should trouble herself earnestly about a sister with whom she has nothing in common, or apparently much affection for. There must be an arriÉre pensÈe in her ejaculation.

“Why should you be so thankful that Zai cares for me?” he asks, carelessly, amazed to see her colour come and go swiftly, and the hand he still holds tremble in his.

But Trixy drags away her fingers and shrinks back into the furthest corner of her fauteuil.

“Oh! I don’t know!” she says, nervously. “I just wanted to hear if she was happy and loved you only.”

“Loved me only! Why, who should she love else?” he demands, gravely.

“No one, of course. You always make me nervous, Delaval, when you turn inquisitor. As a child I hated your questioning propensities.”

“Yes; but you know you always found I was to be trusted; so tell me your troubles now. It will be a relief to you, and let us see—two heads, being better than one—if we cannot find a remedy for them.”

“Don’t bother me, Delaval, I cannot.”

“You mean that you cannot speak of your troubles?”

“Yes! I mean just that. I can’t talk of them, at least to you.”

“It would be better to talk of them to me, Trixy, than to Lady Smiles. She is a chattering, double-faced woman.”

“Lady Smiles! Why, what has she been saying? What dare she say of me?” Trixy asks feverishly, lifting up a flushed face.

“Only letting out a few foolish confidences. You see Lady Smiles may possibly fancy the same man as you may do; and women are horribly spiteful to one another when a man comes between them!”

“I don’t understand what you mean?” she stammers, growing quite white; “and as for my troubles, you must not think that I have any complaint to make against Mr. Stubbs,” she goes on with curious eagerness: “He is really devoted to me, anticipating my wants, lavishing costly things on me, caring for me ten times more than I merit, as I cannot help thinking when I recollect that I married him, hating and despising him!”

“But you care a little for him now, don’t you?”

“Yes, I care for him a little more now,” she replies very doubtfully. “It is true that I ought to care for him, for he is kindness itself, but——”

Here the blue eyes fill with large tears again, and Lord Delaval frowns as he realises that Lady Smiles—Trixy’s bosom friend and confidante—has not been untruthful in her insinuations. Percy Rayne is one of her admirers, and it is to him, as a connection of the Berangers, that she has confided her fears that Trixy is a leetle imprudent in her conduct.

“Trixy! I know you once had a foolish fancy for—for——” he hesitates at the name, he hates it so! struggles with himself, and at last wrenches the words out and almost flings them at her. “For—Carlton Conway! but it is of course impossible that you can still waste a thought or feeling on such an unmitigated scoundrel, a fellow who plays fast and loose with every woman he comes across—a hypocrite, a scoundrel!”

But Trixy springs up from her chair and faces him; two scarlet spots burn in her cheeks, her eyes blaze, and she looks like a beautiful virago.

“How dare you speak of my friend like this, Lord Delaval! I forbid you to do it; I forbid you to say behind Mr. Conway’s back what you would not presume to do before him! Presume, I say it again, for though he is an actor and you are an Earl, there is more to be respected in his little finger than in your whole body! He would not lower himself to abuse a man, just because that man had been loved better than himself!”

“What do you mean?” Lord Delaval demands sternly. He is standing too now, with anger in his eyes, and wounded vanity in his breast.

“I mean that your spite towards Mr. Conway only emanates from the knowledge that your wife loved him as she will never care for any other man in her life!” Trixy says defiantly, though her blue eyes quail a little as they meet his. “And you may tell her from me, that the sooner she forgets him the better, for he does not care for her—that,” and she snaps her finger scornfully.

“He cares for you, no doubt!” Lord Delaval answers quietly, though his whole frame trembles with outraged pride and mortification. “But mark my words, his love will drag you down to the lowest depths, and——” he pauses, lays a hand on her shoulder, and speaks slowly and deliberately; “when he has got hold of the money poor old Stubbs was fool enough to settle on you, my dear Trixy, he will fling you to the devil!”

And without another word he leaves the room.

But Trixy’s words have raised up a feeling in his heart about his wife which cannot fail to build up a wall of reserve and suspicion.

It is in the dusk of the evening when he returns after two days’ absence, but the firelight is bright enough to show him the gladness in Zai’s face as he enters the room. Lavater himself could not find any guile in it, but jealousy and suspicion know no reason.

“My darling! my darling!” she cries, throwing herself into his arms, and holding up her sweet lips for his kiss, but he puts her aside quietly, and, amazed at his manner, she stands a little apart.

“What are you doing in the dark here?” he asks, in a cold, cutting voice. “Dreaming of the old days?”

“I don’t understand what ails you!” she falters. “I was sitting here, wondering when you would come back, for it has been so dull, so miserable without you! but now you have come back, you are so strange, Delaval!”

“Light those candles,” he orders abruptly.

She goes up to the mantel-piece and obeys him.

The tapers shine down full on her chesnut hair, her pure sweet face, her pathetic grey eyes.

“Now I can see you,” he says curtly, inwardly moved by her exceeding fairness, but outwardly cold and stern. “Well, why don’t you ask for news of Trixy?”

“I forgot about her,” she answers gently. “I was thinking about you.”

“About me! as if you ever gave me a thought!” he sneers. “I hate to be fooled.”

“Fooled!” she repeats. “Oh! Delaval, what have I done to make you say such things?”

“Done! why you have married me, loving that scoundrel Conway!” he blurts furiously. “Nice thing it is for a man to know every day and night of his life that his wife is eating her heart out for a fellow like that!”

She has slid down on the floor by this time, and looks up at him with a blanched, scared face, and piteous eyes.

It seems to her that in this moment the love she has learned to look upon as her dearest, dearest possession is gone out of her grasp.

Delaval must hate her, or he could not glare at her like this, he could not say such awful, awful things.

“Well?” he asks, “have you nothing to answer in self-defence? How dared you come to an honest man’s home with infidelity in your heart, lies on your lips. Don’t you know that you are a wicked——”

“For God’s sake Delaval! For God’s sake! don’t say such things to me!” she interrupts hastily. “If you believe me to be so false—so bad—send me away from you, but I cannot live with you and learn that I have lost your love!”

“Poor little woman!” he says, half relenting; “we cannot control our affections, so why should I blame you after all?”

“Won’t you believe me if I swear, Delaval?”

“I thought you never took an oath,” he says harshly.

“I do not like to swear, but I will now, now that all I hold most precious on earth is in the balance!” she sobs through her tears.

“Swear then! Say ‘I love you and you only, so help me God!’”

“I love you, Delaval, and only you, so help me God!” she says solemnly. “Oh! you believe me now, don’t you?”

He looks at her. As has been said before in the olden days Phryne’s face and form moved her judges to mercy—so this fair face and form move him to belief.

It is not possible that deceit can lurk behind her candid brow, her limpid eyes!

“Come to me, little one!”

In a moment she is in his arms, her white face pillowed on his breast, her lips smiling. “Ah! you believe me, Delaval, or you would not take me in your arms! you know I love you—darling—my own, own darling!—love you with all my heart. I never, never think of any one else.”

“Not even of—Conway?”

But she does not shrink or blush at the name.

“I do—sometimes,” she whispers, “but only to wonder how I could ever have cared about him at all.”

Truth is stamped on every feature of her face. Truth shines in her glance. He would be more the man if he could resist this evidence.

So, though he will not humiliate himself to his wife by acknowledging himself in the wrong, he gathers her closer to him and kisses her with the ardour of their honeymoon days.

And she is content, she wants no more than this.

“You have not asked about Trixy?” he says presently; “and I have something to tell you that will grieve you, my pet.”

But she is nestling in his clasp, and it seems to her that nothing can grieve her very much now.

“Is Trixy ill?”

“No!”

“Is she—but no—Delaval! it can’t be that Trixy is—dead!” she cries.

“Dead to you—Zai—but not really dead, unfortunately for herself. Trixy left her husband yesterday and has gone away,”—he hesitates.

“Where?”

“With—Carlton Conway!”

Gone away with Carlton Conway!

For a second Zai looks at her husband as if she was stunned, and does not even realise the fact that he is watching her face with a keen searching glance.

“Poor Trixy!” she says at last, but beyond an expression of pity on her mobile features, Lord Delaval fails to discover any regret. Still he remarks perversely, “Lucky Trixy! you mean!”

“Oh! Delaval! isn’t it terrible!” Zai says, as if his last words had fallen unheard. “Trixy must awake some day to the consciousness of her conduct to her husband. He isn’t loveable or lovely of course, but he was awfully kind to her, you know. What will become of her, for I am afraid Mr. Conway is not a good man, and unless she had money, he wouldn’t care to be tied to her, I think!”

“She has money, old Stubbs settled £40,000 on her, and so long as it lasts Conway will stick to her like a leech, you may be sure; but when it’s gone, then Trixy will be sent to the devil!”

“But he’ll marry her of course, directly the divorce is given! I hope and pray he will! for after all she has given up for him, it will be dreadful for Trixy to find out what he is! Papa can make him marry her, can’t he, Delaval!”

“No one can make him marry her—except his conscience—but I doubt his having one. I say Zai, don’t you feel a little sorry that he has gone over to your sister? Women hate defection in men you know!”

“I am sorry for Trixy! I don’t understand what you mean by women hating defection in men, but if you think that it matters to me who Mr. Conway runs away with, you are quite wrong! I would rather it was anyone though but my sister, for of course I wish her to be happy.”

“Which Mr. Conway’s noble presence ought to make her.”

“Which it won’t make her. If I thought you would not call me spiteful—Delaval—I would tell you what I think!”

“Tell away—child.”

“Well, mamma said he was a cad, and though I don’t quite know the exact meaning of the word, I am afraid he is something of the sort!”